Tuesday, July 05, 2016

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. Again!

Is an information architect just a wireframe monkey? No, of course not! But unfortunately, sometimes we're confined by a mindset that thinks IA is a box to check off on a project plan.

We need a framework and shared vocabulary to build the discipline of IA and help us all become better information architects. So... what's missing from whatever we're using now?

In "The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly: A Language of Critique for Information Architecture," presented at the 2016 IA Summit, I discuss Van Gigch's Meta-Modeling Methodology (M3) and Michel Foucault. I walk through the M3 model as a tool for distinguishing among 3
key levels of critique: day-to-day practices, IA/UX theories and models,
and the paradigms that shape what we can do or can even think about
doing. The goal is to work towards a discipline-level
framework and a shared vocabulary for making sense of what we do.